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["Assignment": <small>Ioan Bălan — 2273</small>](/stories/assignment)
: *Madison Rye Progress*[^1]
Ioan Bălan, tasked with investigating a flash-cult, tries to figure out what the heck just happened.
*CWs:* brief violence.
["Coffee Leak": <small>Tomash — 2299</small>](/stories/coffee-leak)
: *Krzysztof "Tomash" Drewniak*
Not every object works quite as you expect it.
*CWs:* none.
["Dreams for Breakfast": <small>In All Ways — 2183</small>](/stories/dreams-for-breakfast)
: *Alexandria Christina Leal*
An unsettling dream, a conversation over breakfast.
*CWs:* none.
*Spoilers:* references to material in *Qoheleth*.
["Fever Dreams": <small>Hieromech — 2399</small>](/stories/fever-dreams)
: *Ember "Hieromech" Cloke*
A poem written twelve hours before uploading.
*CWs:* references to some of the grosser aspects of having a body.
["For Old Times New": <small>Sierra — 2207</small>](/stories/for-old-times-new)
: *JL Conway*
From old body to new, from old life to now.
*CWs:* none.
["Hues": <small>True Name — 2350</small>](/stories/hues)
: *Madison Rye Progress*
After so much trauma, True Name sees the world in new hues...
*CWs:* None
*Spoilers:* lots of *Mitzvot*.
["Meeting of One": <small>Ioan Bălan — 2309</small>](/stories/meeting-of-one)
: *Madison Rye Progress*
Quakers? In space? It's more likely than you think.
*CWs:* none.
["Opportunity Paralysis": <small>Rena Hatch — 2368</small>](/stories/opportunity-paralysis)
: *Madison Rye Progress*
Uploading to transition is not at all uncommon. What you do when you get there, though, is a story you will have to live.
*CWs:* none.
["The Party": <small>Scout At The Party III — 2323</small>](/stories/the-party)
: *Krzysztof "Tomash" Drewniak*
The Party *never* stops. There is a dog in this one~
*CWs:* none.
["To — in the days after her death": <small>██ — 2306</small>](/stories/to---in-the-days-after-her-death)
: *Madison Rye Progress*
And I, Atropos to such dreams as these, find shears on golden thread...
*CWs:* reference to suicide.
["Prophecies": <small>Slow Hours — 2401</small>](/stories/prophecies)
: *Madison Rye Progress with No Longer Myself of [The Lament](https://cohost.org/hamratza)*
Slow Hours and If I Dream hunt down a missing cocladist, weeks after a loss.
*CWs:* discussions of suicide.
*Spoilers:* references to the plot hook of *Marsh*.
["Reading": <small>Rye — 2273</small>](/stories/reading)
: *Madison Rye Progress*
All readings are the same, as Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars well knows...
*CWs:* none.
["Regret of Potential": <small>Unknown — 2258</small>](/stories/regret-of-potential)
: *Madison Rye Progress*
Cladist who regrets.
*CWs:* none.
["Scan": <small><em>(no date info)</em></small>](/stories/scan)
: *Voksa*
*Scratch* — Something's gone wrong...
*CWs:* surgery, mild body horror.
["Shared Moment": <small>Ioan Bălan — 2326</small>](/stories/shared-moment)
: *Madison Rye Progress*
An exploration of the sensuality of sensorium play between skunks and Bălans.
*CWs:* vague description of sex.
[*Unintended Tendencies*](https://jessfluf.itch.io/unintended-tendencies) — <small><em>available on Itch.io</em></small>
: *JL Conway*
This is the story of one soul, shortly after upload to a vast digital world, exploring themself and their identity. Checking the boundaries of who and what they are, peeling back the layers of gender, self, and species. All the while discovering the fractures that lay beneath along with the trauma carried from the years before upload as they grapple with their own life, past, and future in the unlimited world of the System.
Available to download on Itch.io, name your own price — help support writers in our community!
*CWs:* transphobia; PTSD and visceral descriptions of panic.
["Wrigglings Toward": <small>May Then My Name — 2324</small>](/stories/wrigglings-toward)
: *True Name of [The Lament](https://cohost.org/hamratza)*
There was no dearth of proxmity with Ioan, but still there was a lack...
*CWs:* none.
[^1]: *née* Scott-Clary

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title: Arise to Oath and Office
author: Krzysztof "Tomash" Drewniak
character: Tomash — 2401
type: story
---
At around 11:30 PM on New Year's Eve 2399, Tomash wandered home. He planned to come back to the small gathering he'd left in time for midnight, but he needed a break from socializing and space to finally process a merge from earlier that night.
That pre-midnight return never happened. Instead, some time later, Tomash found himself bolting off of his couch with his fur standing up all over his body as a flood of sensorium messages came in.
\[highest urgency\] "*I can't find him! He's gone! I can't send to him! Where is he??!!" —* Scout With John Doe
"*The date jumped! A **lot**!"* — Scout On Platform 3
"*A bunch of people vanished. Why?*" — Scout In Central Park
Tomash bent over, clutching his head as the pressure of almost all of his clade trying to get a hold of him at once built up.
\[high urgency\] "*Big screaming, missing people, come quick!*" — Scout In Springfield Village Square
\[confused head-tilt\] — 19 Scout instances
"*Hey, Cyan just disappeared, their down said they never got a merge, just wanted to let you know while I file a ticket … never mind, there's already, like, five meta-tickets, good luck, call me if you need me.*" — Tomash#ThePondMustGrow
\[high urgency, heavy panting in background\] "*Where's Older Coffee? Did he come home?"* — 2nd Scout Behind Coffeeshops II
Tomash pushed the messages back, willing the stream of contact from his clade into an orderly line that'd wait a moment while he worked out what was going on.
He walked over to his desk, sat down, and pulled up the systech feeds. As he read the first page of subjects, he frowned. Confusion, instances missing all over, no core dumps, massive downtime, external feeds down … a whole lot of information, and none of it was any good for explaining what had happened.
Whatever this … bug? incident? … was, one thing was obvious in that moment: he and the rest of the System Emergency Response Group would need more data and more coverage.
It was time to call on the pack.
The Scout arm of his clade was mostly dedicated to scampering around the System being dogs, both for their own fun and so he could eventually live vicariously through their merges. Their other purpose, though, was to keep an eye out for problems that might require his attention. That was, as they thought of it, the Job.
Tomash hadn't ever dreamed that the whole pack would get sucked into the Job in one go, but he'd just had it thunder through his head. As he stood up, smoothed his fur, and mentally ran through his message, he realized he didn't just need the pack: he needed more Tomash instances, but with a Scout's local context. He'd had to do this a few times over the last century, and the relevant Scout had always found merging in his people-y up-tree uncomfortable afterwards. *Nothing for it, though.*
He stood in front of his desk and started up a sensorium conference. Full video and audio. At first, he roped in the other Tomashes. "*About to call the pack,*" he said. "*Figure y'all'll get the idea from the message. Couldn't think of two explanations.*"
Then, at high priority, he pulled in the pack: every last Scout, minus the usual rabbit-chaser exclusion list who wanted nothing to do with wrangling the System anymore. A sea of over a hundred dogs filled the space in front of him. They were worried, sad, scared, running around in a panic, and, most of all, looking up at him for answers. The Tomash instances arranged themselves behind and to the side of him in the half-real abstraction of Tomash's office the conference message was taking place in now.
"*First of all, thank you, each of you, for all the messages. Good job, Scout. Good dog. All of you are such good dogs.*"
Some tails wagged.
"*Second …"* Tomash sighed. "*I don't know what happened.*" He paused. "*No one knows. SERG's trying to find out. I'm trying to find out.*"
That intensified the emotions of the dog pack. Tomash, their down-tree, was the Elder, the one who knew things, who could help. If he didn't know anything … More worry, more sadness.
"*Third, whatever happened happened everywhere, and it's still looking random. So we need to find more about who's gone, see if there's any patterns, any clues. … Oh, and, right, let's use the clade feed for that, I got really wasped just now because of how good you were at raising the alarm.*"
Much of the packed perked up. Tomash's drive to understand and help the world, those desires that had made him a systech, had a very canine reflection in his four-legged forks: they were dogs with a Job, and they liked doing the Job. The Job was fun!
Tomash paused again. Took a deep breath, trying to soothe the frantic energy bouncing through him. *Yeah, this has to happen.* As he was about to begin, he realized a tiny problem with his plan so far. He forked off four instances, Tomash#Rights0 through #Rights3, granting them technician's privileges and pulling them into the call. "*These are the #Rights instances, call them for the bit, not me. Just realized we'll need that.*"
Some of the dogs glanced at each other, confused. Instances specifically for empowering the clade? Why would he do that?
"*Now, finally, with how bad this is looking and with what the System needs, I have to do this. Scout, Scouts, I'm sorry in advance.*"
Then, before the pack had too much time to react, he shifted his voice and straightened up. His next words were something that he always intoned, not merely said. He ensured his gaze was firmly on the pack, so they all saw him looking right at them. "*Scout. Scout, wake up. Remember. Remember the pack. Remember the clade. Remember becoming you. Remember being like me. Remember speaking. Remember fingers. Remember two legs. Remember being me. Remember the office. Remember the oath. Remember* why.
"*Scout, I ask you now to arise to oath and office. Fork towards me. I need the me in you. I need the me* from *you. All of you, if you please.*"
The pack stood grimly as they remembered. As they formed the intent to, through new forks, walk back towards existing like Tomash. Some Scouts chose not to go through with it, either from not wanting to deal with the merges or from not seeing the point, but most did. The call was still and silent as the clade expanded in a way it had never been meant to.
Tomash#root stood there running a paw through the fur on his head, unsure what else to say, until some forks started filtering in. "*Good luck. I'll call if there's news.*" he concluded before dropping out of the message.
---
Scout In Springfield Village Square walked through the terrified crowds (in a few cases, literally) towards the steps of City Hall. Springfield Village was a sim that tried its hardest to pretend it wasn't a sim at all. The people who wanted to live here came to stick to the illusion that they'd just emigrated to another country, not another mode of existence. Being too obviously uploaded was against local ordinances and, at worst, a banishable offense. The place was a Taskerville, and one more true to the stereotypes than not at that.
There'd been a lot of disappearances here. Huge portions of the crowd gathered for the fireworks were gone. The mayor, deputy mayor, and police chief were all gone. Those authorities who remained had no idea what to do other than to desperately shout appeals for calm.
Scout stood near the podium and looked in its direction. No one seemed to pay him much attention. He was just the dog who hung around the square, after all. Those who knew he was more than that had, over the years, kept the secret, and weren't paying him much mind right now anyway.
Fork. Fork. Fork. Forkfork. Quitquitquitquit.
Now, Tomash#SpringfieldVillage stood behind the podium. He'd elected to lose the fur and drag out his human appearance — even in an emergency, it was important to not disrupt the culture of the sims one was helping more than needed.
Some people in the crowd noticed his appearance and pointed at the newcomer.
"*The office, please?*" #SpringfieldVillage sent to #Rights2, commencing the little ritual the clade had for giving up-trees systech rights that hadn't been granted at time of forking or that had been automatically revoked due to sufficient individuation.
"*Swear to defend against defects and threats, internal and external?*" came the reply. That was a paraphrased line from the systech oath their root had written, but not one that #SpringfieldVillage could remember being used for this rite.
"*Really? You think?"*
#Rights2 gave the impression of a shrug. "*Yeah, maybe.*"
"*System take me otherwise, then."* Tomash#SpringfieldVillage said.
"*Done.*" And so it was.
The newly-minted systech summed his token, an adapted dog's vest that told everyone his job and (despite this Tomash's lack of fur) that he shouldn't be petted while on duty.
He fiddled with the microphone and cleared his throat into it.
"I'm Tomash. I'm a perisystem technician with the System Emergency Response Group. I'm here to help work out what happened." he announced. "I can't make any promises, or offer any details about what caused this.
"Since it might help us, I'd appreciate it if you all could put together lists of the people you know, along with if you can message them or look them up in the directory or not. That might help us solve this. If you spot any patterns on those lists, please let me know."
He waved a hand towards the patch of lawn that'd been roped off for the pyrotechnics. All the fireworks and barriers disappeared, replaced by a trailer, a table, some folding chairs, and a temporary roof over the whole thing reading 'System Emergency Response Group'. "I'll be over by the trailer," he added. "Councilmembers, if you could join me there?"
He began walking through the crowd, leaving his up-tree to go be a dog again. What was left of the town council followed him in a daze. *This'll be a huge mess,* they all thought.
None of them knew just how right they were.

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title: Error Bell
author: Krzysztof "Tomash" Drewniak
character: Cyan-Less-2-Green — 2373
type: story
---
The error bell tolled again.
It hung in the belfries of simulated cathedrals. It hovered impossibly in midair above some few bars. It sat, impossibly shrunk, on desks.
In its myriad homes, the error bell rang mournfully.
Someone who had started to upload didn't make it.
Someone who had had a chance.
Some of those who failed to upload had been doomed to die before they made their appointment. No process changes, no inspection, could have saved them. The cure for that fate lay in long years of climate remediation, of engineering, of medical research, of late nights and increased funding.
Evan Nguyen was not, per the initial burst of data, so unfortunate. He should have been receiving his tutorial. Yet he was not.
A small contingent of investigators, who'd drawn themselves out of the set of techs who watched the upload failure report feed, gathered around a table, letting the fading echoes of the bell they had rung fade away.
Cyan-Less-2-Green of the RGB clade spoke first. "Springfield again," he said, glum, as he ran a hand through his nearly-pure-cyan hair.
"Third one in two years that's like this from them now," April Is The Cruelest Month, an anthro rat, commented. "Three alignment alarms, three post-correction resumes, and then he went to noise. Like the corrections didn't take." Her ears and tail drooped.
"`Different unit too.`" That was BT-034, who'd done a lot of work on its robot body over the last few decades. "`But a lot else seems close. Same room.`"
"Ah, excuse me, should we take the pause?" Spider asked, straightening her tie. "Or is this one time-sensitive?"
"Now's good," Bob agreed. "Not like they'll be less cagey a thou earlier."
Cyan mimed pulling a shade down. The displays around the room, in whatever form they took, faded out, and the light went dim. "A thousandth-day of silence for Evan Nguyen, who couldn't join us here today."
The room stilled.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
*Ding*.
The room brightened and came back to life.
"So," Cyan said, "it's really starting to feel like there's a pattern to these." Links to the bundles of work on two previous incidents from Springfield showed up for everyone else as he added in the references. "But I can't find it."
He popped open the older reports himself. "Do we have *anything* more on these ones?"
"`I don't understand why they took so long to send maintenance logs`," BT-034 said.
"Could we try to get a court order, maybe?" Spider suggested.
An icon appeared over Cruelest Month's head as she turned her hearing off and stared down at the thick tome she often used as an interface.
"We've tried," Bob said. "But the lawyers have decided they won't push on this one too hard for some reason, and the courts down there aren't in a huge hurry either, if I'm reading this right."
"The board's on a small clinics kick again," Cyan said, "so, knowing how the phys-side inspectors are, they're being even more friendly about things than usual."
"And they're insisting that they did everything right and that they have no idea what the problem could be and that they're busy and all these other excuses," Bob said. "So there's nothing there but people dragging their feet on the inquiry. Typical."
BT-034 cut in by projecting a graph into the air. "`I looked through the small batch of inspection reports from before the last failure that we finally got. These dispersion readings don't look random enough to me.`"
The rest of the room looked at the display. "Huh," Cyan said, "Weird."
"Wait, are we thinking there's something wrong with the data we're getting?" Spider asked.
Cyan shrugged. "Dunno."
"Should we call them to get initial statements?" Spider asked.
"Can't hurt," Bob agreed.
"Probably won't go anywhere, but it's worth a shot." Cyan tapped the table so that the small AVEC stage built into the sim would activate on one end of the room. He checked to make sure everyone was ready and dialed the clinic.
At the last ring, someone picked up. The assembled systechs couldn't see who they were talking to, since he was very close to the camera, but they did notice what might be a mop handle in the picture.
"Hello," Cyan said. "Is this Springfield Upload?"
"Sure is," the person phys-side agreed.
"We're with an upload reliability working group, and we're calling about the recent upload failure."
"Sorry, can't help you schedule. Amy's on break and I don't know how to work the calendar," the man said.
"We're calling about the recent upload *failure*. A Mr. Nguyen in unit 5. We'd like to get people's impressions while they're still fresh," Cyan clarified.
The man on the other end realized he'd misheard. "Wait, upload failure?" he asked. The techs could see him backing up and leaning down so that his face was mostly in view.
"You haven't heard yet?" Spider asked.
The man shook his head "Nope, no one's said a thing. I can ask Doc for you but he's in the office tidying up the paperwork and we're supposed to leave him alone when he's in there."
He paused. "Who'd you say you were calling about again?"
"Evan Nguyen," Cyan said.
"...Older fellow in pretty good shape besides the bad leg?"
Cyan recalled the personal data. "That matches his paperwork."
"We chatted a bit before he went up. Gave me his good knife 'cause none of his kids wanted it. They're missing out, really. You said...he didn't make it?"
"Unfortunately," Cyan said. "We're trying to figure out what happened."
"I thought that machine was gonna kill someone one of these days. It beeps way more than the rest of them."
Cyan let a silence hang in the hopes of getting more information.
"Yeah, number 5's the fussy one. We had someone in here to fiddle with it last year and again a few months back, but whatever they did didn't work."
A cloud of data appeared around BT-034 as it thought of something else to check.
"Huh, interesting," Cyan said. "No one's said anything about that–"
"–Dreamer's fuzzy radar ears!" Cruelest Month shouted, sending portions of the current and previous reports into the middle of the room with added highlighting. She remembered to undeafen herself and continued. "Look at this! The main serial's different, but these part IDs haven't changed! That...can't happen."
"Someone's recycling bad parts?" Bob suggested.
Cyan held up a hand for silence. He'd just had an idea about what could be going on here. He didn't like it, but if it was true...this might be his one chance to check.
"Sorry about that," he said. "Could you do me a favor, uh...didn't get your name, I'm afraid."
"Steve. I do the cleaning and the fixing around here, at least when it's small stuff. You?"
"Cyan-Less-2-Green. Or just Cyan."
"Oh, like the hair? Bit on the nose, no?"
"It's a good naming scheme," Cyan objected. "Makes it a bit easier to tell my cos apart. But anyway, Steve, could you go get the serial number off of unit 5? It'll be on a plate on the back by the main power cable."
"Sure thing," Steve agreed. He came back about a minute later and read out a serial.
"That's from the first incident," Spider said.
"The first incident?" Steve asked.
"We've seen two cases that looked similar to what happened with Mr. Nguyen — Evan — over the last two years," Cyan said. "We've been trying to figure out why the issue keeps happening, especially since it's always been on different scanners. Or...we thought it's been different ones."
"That laser's been there as long as I have," Steve said. "You're telling me that thing just kills people sometimes? Kills-kills, not upload-kills."
"Looks like it," Cyan said. "Thanks for talking to us about this. We've been having...a lot of trouble getting information."
"Sorry to interrupt," Spider said, "but how long have you been working at this clinic?"
"Six-ish years, why?"
Spider flicked another excerpt into the rapidly-growing heap of suspicious documents that was hovering over the conference table. "Install date's wrong too, then," she said. "Probably to dodge the deep clean."
Dr. Andrew H. Brown, or just Doc, leaned head into reception. "Amy, can you reschedule some of Monday's slots please? We'll be down —" Doc noticed the call, who was on the call, and heard Spider's comment about the dates.
If that was who he thought it was and they'd found something he'd overlooked...there could be trouble. He scrambled over to the desk and jabbed the end call button, shoving past Steve.
Sys-side, the view of the clinic disappeared.
Cruelest Month was the first to say what everyone was thinking. "Well, fuck."
"At least now we've got a lead," Cyan said. "Penny pinching rat-bastards...sorry." He looked over at Cruelest Month.
"You're good," Cruelest Month said.
"Let's get more people and more forks on this and see what we've found by tomorrow," Bob suggested.
"Should we put the seals back up for now?" Spider asked. "I don't think who died matters for this."
Cyan, who'd been running through his list of people he'd want to pull into this investigation even before Bob suggested it, startled at the question. "Right, good point, thanks Spider. Then I'll make a feed for this mess." *Glad someone's paying attention to that.*
The meeting dispersed into scurrying sub-groups (in Cruelest Month's case, literally) of systechs. They didn't have much difficulty finding evidence that there was something fishy with Springfield Upload's paperwork (such as they had access to), as finding issues is much easier when one knows there are issues to find.
By the next day, a larger gathering of people with an interest in upload failure investigations, including many of the ex-regulators and ex-lawyers, were gathered in a bigger meeting room. *Wizard council's not what I would've gone with*, Cyan thought, *but it'll do.*
The crowd was there so that everyone could go through what evidence they'd managed to gather before it got packaged up and sent phys-side. They didn't have hard proof — just inconsistencies in statements and paperwork — but there were plenty of small issues that the Consortium could quickly follow up on.
Over the next two weeks, it became clear the Consortium wasn't all that concerned by what these systechs had found. Oh, they were investigating, of course, but they were not using any of the tools they had to handle problems quickly. Instead, there were initial inquiries and requests for an explanation and all the other ways to look into the problem without accusing anyone of anything or having to compel their cooperation.
The Consortium lawyers were caught between wanting to do something and the weight of customs, expectations, procedures, and precedents. This wasn't *that* bad or *that* urgent, they reasoned, relative to previous issues, and no one wanted to explain to management why they'd suddenly pulled out every tool at their disposal for *this*. They didn't want to have to explain why they'd ignored the issue, either, if this became a bigger deal. So, they rode that tension as best they could, poking around the edges of what the techs had discovered.
This was understandable. Understandable, however, did not mean acceptable, as far as Cyan and his friends and colleagues were concerned, though.
From their perch up the Ansible, they reached for their own ways to tip the scales.
There was nothing they could do, personally or collectively, to make the situation change, but public opinion has a weight to it. Some of those who devoted their immortality to improving the reliability of uploading had cultivated the ability to leverage it.
So, the techs who'd been at that first meeting took some time to summarize all that had happened into a letter of concern. They were concerned about what was going on at Springfield Upload and the lack of action from the Consortium. Something needed to change before someone else got killed.
Before they thrust their worries into circulation, they sent copies to those they were worried about to get their statements. The matter wasn't so urgent that it required breaching that custom, after all.
The Consortium responded with the expected platitudes about limited investigative resources.
As to the clinic itself, Cyan, for the grave sin of being first on the author list, received the panicked call.
"You can't publish this!" Dr. Brown insisted. "You'll ruin me!"
Cyan hadn't expected to be contacted at what was, for Doc, nearly midnight. He certainly wasn't happy that the messages left for him had been given extremely high priorities, enough to jolt him awake with adrenaline. "And?" he demanded.
"You don't get it! We're getting squeezed by rent, squeezed by the power bill and the costs. We can't afford to be down for all the inspections and calibrations and rebuilds! So we let things slide and then there was an incident so we had to cover that up!"
"So you decided to knowingly use unsafe equipment and cover it up?" Cyan asked.
"What else was I supposed to do?"
"Well, for one thing, lax inspections and maintenance happen all the time. We've got pages of ways to say 'they half-assed the checks' without remotely implying blame. You just admit to the problem, promise to do better, and that's it unless it's an obvious pattern." Cyan said. *I don't always like it, but it's the least bad way to handle those issues. Can't have people afraid of us.* "Or maybe you could take a license downgrade? Stop taking higher-risk cases and get longer teardown timelines? You had a lot of options that weren't *fraud.*"
"But then we'd look bad and lose customers!"
"And you won't look bad now that you've ***killed three people and covered it up***?" Cyan wished he could give this Doc a firm ping to emphasize his point.
"It was going to be fine!" Doc insisted. "It was just paperwork, and then it was just a one-off issue!"
Cyan glared at the video feed of the doctor.
"I didn't know it would get this bad!" Doc said, driven to panic by what he thought would happen to him. "Honestly, I didn't think this would happen!"
"You didn't think more people would die when you didn't fix whatever it was that killed someone and just kept that unit in service." Cyan didn't need to play up his skeptical expression.
"I… I… accidents happen!"
"Accidents do happen," Cyan agreed. "But we can prevent a lot of them if we try. That's why I do all this! I don't want you to go to prison, I want people to not die because the head's been drifting for months or someone forgot to flip a switch! Do you think I want to be playing cop from up here of all places?"
The question seemed to throw Doc for a loop. "I… so what do you want?"
"I want people to stop dying. Personally, I want people to do their annual earthquake test — not an issue for you, I know, but I've seen too many problems. But as to what I want from you…"
Cyan took a deep breath. *I know this is the least bad solution. I've talked about it. I've seen it happen. It's the world we live in.*
"Tomorrow morning, go announce that you've found out about all these safety issues and that you can't believe you didn't notice until after someone died. I'm sure you can make it sound good. Work with the board, let them censure you if they think they have to. Maybe take a long vacation, maybe resign. We both know they don't throw the book at people who look like they're being forthcoming."
Cyan could almost see Doc latching onto the idea. "And then you won't send this letter to everyone?"
"Then we won't need to," Cyan said. "That letter's for getting people to fix the problem. If you fix the problem without us needing to try and draw public attention to it, then we have what we want. Upload reliability, or closer to it, at least."
"You're sure I'm not going to go to prison over this?" Doc asked.
"I can't promise anything. I don't know how hard it'll be to pull the 'I had no idea' routine, but I've seen the Consortium keeping things quiet much more often than not."
"I thought it was going to be fine," Doc repeated, tears beginning to form.
"Get some sleep," Cyan suggested. "We won't do anything until your tomorrow morning."
Dr. Brown hung up the call.
Several hours later, Cyan's group was greeted by the announcement that Springfield Upload had discovered serious irregularities while investigating a misupload and would be shutting down until the Ansible Board could help them investigate.
The letter of concern, nearly finished, sank into archives and exocortices, and those involved gathered for a muted celebration.
They had gotten the best resolution they could hope for under the circumstances, and that was reason enough to a party. To toast all those who would now not die of preventable error this year or the next, and to remember those three who had not made it.
Above the gathered crowd, the error bell tolled once more.
*Someone else can take that one,* Cyan concluded. *I need a break from these.*

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---
title: Hunting Dogs
author: Krzysztof "Tomash" Drewniak
character: Scout By The Washes-Away-Paintings Beach — 2994
type: story
---
Scout By The Washes-Away-Paintings Beach was lying, half-awake, on one of the boardwalks lining that beach. The consistently mild weather of this sim made his spot — and it's been *his* spot for several years, don't even think about it — a perfect place to spend the parts of his days that weren't occupied by other business. Business like, say, barking at the occasional person who was being a jerk. Or food, food was important. Mustn't forget food. And pets. And food.
Thoughts of food and pets set Scout to remembering. There was this lady who came by to give him some bacon — it was really tasty bacon, too! — every once in a while. No, every week, Scout's System-enhanced memory supplied, every single week since he'd picked this place to settle down. Every week … except the last five.
*Where is she?* Scout wondered. *Is she okay?*
Following up on that thought wasn't his job. Scout was a dog, after all, and dogs, even dogs who used to be people-shaped, don't conduct complex investigations, especially given their lack of usable fingers. They do, however, tell their pack-elder, their … down-tree, right … about weird things and let him handle it. That was, after all, the Job, and the Scouts had gotten good at it over their many years as a pack.
Scout stood and shook out his slightly damp fur. "*The lady who always gives me bacon is missing,*" Scout sent, including his memory of her appearance and her scent. "*Her name might be Sylvia. Can you help?*"
Then he laid back down to wait for a response. He had a very important snooze to get back to.
---
Tomash#2f8de111 had forked to give someone a hand with their LARP's "talking is a free action" implementation, but he wasn't doing that today. Today was an on-call day. The Tomashes who did systech things had long-since agreed to rotate who answered related calls and messages, as it would be unfair to himselves to stick their root instance with all the messaging just because he'd lost the coin toss. So, when Scout sent his question, it came to this Tomash, not the dog's down-tree.
The message came with a mental *ping*, a sense that someone had something for him. As Tomash turned his attention to the message, he learned that it was from a Scout and his tail wagged a few times. The Scouts were good at sending messages and weren't prone to asking for impossible things and then getting upset when they were told no.
The question seemed simple enough. *Doesn't seem like a tech issue,* Tomash thought, *but worth checking out so see if we can find out what happened to Sylvia the bacon lady.*
He forked, creating Tomash#b7f77cb0, an instance of himself who wasn't a perisystem technician. The new Tomash vanished, stepping out to the sim where Paintings Beach had made his home.
When he got there, there was, as befit a dog reuniting with somebody, much petting and licking and excited zooming around. Soon enough, though, they got to work.
---
Finding someone on the System is neither fast, easy, nor cheap. It isn't necessarily a drain on one's rep balance, but working out who that person you remember is necessarily involves asking for a bit of people's time in the hopes they might know. One is unlikely to get far with such inquiries without offering some compensation, whether in rep or favors or being interesting.
Tomash (and Scout) had advantages and disadvantages in their search for the bacon lady. On the one hand, they had, from Scout, a lot of memories of this person, which allowed for the indirect method of trying to find someone she often hung out with in the hopes that they knew how to get in touch with her. On the other hand, the perspective in all their sensorium recordings of their missed connection was extremely skewed: they came from Scout, who was, after all, a dog-shaped dog. This process would've been easier with the sim entry/exit logs, but Tomash wasn't going to be checking those, as this entire search was a private matter, and he took not poking into privileged information for clade business seriously.
Still, after several days of bouncing the request around feeds related to the Bay of Colors and missed connections, along with occasionally asking people who Scout said looked familiar, Tomash had a lead: the contact address for a particular Sylvia, who'd been helping out a tile-placing group in the permanent part of the Bay for a while now but hadn't been by for over a month. "She told us she needed a break," her friend had told Tomash, "that she needed to think about her life, and we haven't heard anything. Where do you know her from?"
Tomash waved a paw at Scout. "The doggo's a cocladist and he's missing her bacon. Don't go spoiling that, please?"
"Makes sense," the man replied. "Sylvia's a real good cook."
"Right, I'll go write a letter. Thanks for reaching out!"
"No problem, and good luck!"
---
Sylvia had been having a rough day. No, really, a rough week. Or was it a month by now? (It was, the System filled in, which wasn't helping.) She'd looked at a calendar and been struck by a lack of energy. Everything she'd been doing seemed so surface-level, so pointless, so silly. She hadn't *done* anything with her life, really, not before uploading and not afterward, so why bother doing anything more than lounging around in bed?
Feeling the urge to have done something today, she propped herself up and pulled open her messages, wondering what sort of nonsense people were trying to invite her to today. Then, one of the subjects caught her eye "Scout's wondering if you'll be by with bacon again".
*Scout … Scout …* It took Sylvia a while, but she remembered the name. Maybe. She'd seen it once on the collar of that dog who hung out by the beach at the Bay of Colors. When she looked at the sender, it wasn't one of the people from that mosaic group who'd been fun for a while, so she kept reading.
> Hello Sylvia,
>
> I'm Tomash, and I'm writing on behalf of my cocladist, Scout By The Washes-Away-Paintings Beach. Scout is the dog you've been giving pets and some bacon to every week for the last few years. (We'd like you to not tell everyone this fact, as it spoils the fun.)
>
> Scout is worried about "the bacon lady" and wants to know if you're going to be bringing him more treats. It's fine if the answer is "no", we're just looking for information.
>
> — Tomash
Before she'd fully processed what she read, she was responding. "Wait, the dog's a cladist? I thought you couldn't upload animals?"
"You can't," came the reply, "but you can fork into them if you practice that. \- Tomash" The answer was near-instant, even though the original message had been sent hours ago.
Then, the rest of the message hit Sylvia. Here was a social position she hadn't asked for. Becoming the bacon lady — something she'd been for years and just now found out about — wasn't one of her many attempts to find a group that would fill that hole in her soul that longed for some purpose, some meaning, some community. And yet … that cute dog had gotten his cocladist to hunt down her contact info to ask about the bacon.
On top of that, she could picture Scout's disappointed face at the lack of that weekly interaction. If she'd known he wasn't just part of the sim, maybe she wouldn't've run off on everyone. Maybe. Probably. … No, she'd've done it anyway, and that was a real kick in the pants. Something had to change here.
If this was anything like her previous bouts of existential despair, some radical change was called for. But … she'd done a lot of poking around the System: what options did she have?
*Maybe I should ask Tomash,* she thought. *His dog's nice.*
She stood up and looked around her bedroom, and then the rest of her house. It was, unsurprisingly, a mess, but one she could wrangle given appropriate motivation.
> Hi Tomash,
>
> To answer your actual question, I fell into a massive funk when I realized I'd hit a hundred and hadn't really done anything with my life. Since you seem to know a lot about how to work the System (forking into a dog can't be easy), I was hoping maybe you'd have some ideas. Would you mind taking some time to talk about all that in case it helps? Maybe tomorrow at lunch (my place is **\[redacted\]**)? I hope I'm not being too forward.
>
> Also, tell Scout I'll be by with bacon tomorrow evening. I didn't realize how much he'd gotten used to the stuff.
>
> * Sylvia
A reply arrived a few minutes later:
> Lunch at your place tomorrow sounds great!
>
> I passed the news to Scout, and his tail's about to fall off, just look at him!!!!
>
> — Tomash
>
> \[sensorium recording attached\]
---
Lunch came sooner than expected. Sylvia was wearing a white-and-red floral dress, and Tomash (who, it turned out, was also a dog, but a more two-legged one) was wearing a tech person's t-shirt and cargo pants.
The meal itself passed quietly, with Sylvia offering a soup she'd made earlier and Tomash waving off her apologies for the mess (he'd had worse at his place). The food also served as a good distraction, since neither Tomash or Sylvia were quite sure what to say next.
"Right, so …" Tomash said, once the bowls were put away, "the meaning of life, yeah?" He might as well jump into things. "I don't think I can do a lot there? My clade's just systechs and dogs. And a lot of gaming."
Sylvia sighed. "It's … I thought about it, and it's not exactly the meaning of life it's … everything I'm part of, it feels like I'm just sort of there, like it's not my thing, does that make sense?"
"Kinda?" Tomash said. "Sort of like you've got no idea what direction you're supposed to go next?"
"Maybe, yeah." Sylvia said.
"I don't think I can help there either–" Tomash said.
"–that's fine, it's okay, I was just hoping–"
"–but I might have an idea."
"If you're thinking I should try tech stuff, I don't think I'll be any good at it," Sylvia admitted.
"No, it's not that, it's to do with the Scouts."
"The Scouts? Right, yeah, why wouldn't there be more of them! Who doesn't like more dogs?" Sylvia asked, brightening a bit. She'd really liked Scout being at the Bay of Colors, though she hadn't realized how much until recently.
"What I was thinking is, well, what's a good way to bounce around the whole System without feeling like you're doing it for no reason. And then I realized there's a bunch of Scout instances, I think we're hit at least several dozen now, depends how you count, but anyway. And they're all around the place, with names that give you a bit of a hint about where to look … but you'd still need to do a bunch of digging and asking around to find them."
"And you're thinking I'll run into my thing while I'm trying to find all the Scouts so I can make sure they've all met the bacon lady, yeah?"
"Pretty much," Tomash agreed. "I can give you a copy of the clade list so you can keep track of who you've met, and I'm sure the Scouts will be happy to give you hints if you get stuck."
"Right, they can do the telepathy thing," Sylvia remembered. She paused. "But isn't this all a big pointless quest?"
"This is the System, we're really good at big pointless quests."
"You're not wrong," Sylvia said. "But now that I'm thinking about it, how do I ask around without giving away that the Scouts are cladists?"
Tomash shrugged. "Tell them some eccentric designer hid dogs all over the place if you want or something. Really, we try to keep the whole thing quiet so people see a Scout and just give him a scratch behind the ears instead of thinking he's part of some big conspiracy. That'd really spoil the mood."
"I'm sure it would," Sylvia said. "Now, you were going to get me a list? I'll want to look at that while I fry up the good stuff."
Tomash sat down. "Give me a few minutes to get it all set up right."
Soon enough, Tomash passed over a small booklet, styled after a wildlife-watcher's logbook. "Here's an autoupdating list of the Scout subclade with plenty of room for notes. And a few special remarks here and there."
Sylvia flipped through the book, realizing as she did so just how big this big pointless quest actually was. She could probably spend *years* on finding all these dogs, maybe even a few decades if she was unlucky. Finding all the dogs was a really *weird* temporary life goal, but … it might work. Also, those dogs were cute!
"You're the sort of person who likes crosswords, aren't you?" she asked Tomash, only slightly annoyed.
"Guilty as charged," Tomash said. "What gave it away?"
"The names these dogs picked!" Sylvia said. "Like, Scout Behind Coffeeshops II — if my hunch is right I 'just' need to wander around Infinite Cafe until I find the dog, but what the heck am I supposed to do with Scout Among The Weird Skunks With Good Kettlecorn? Or Scout Under The Dispatch Desk? Those could be *anywhere*!"
Tomash smiled. "You've got time. And you can fork. You'll figure the clade out soon enough, I'm sure."
Sylvia sighed. "You're not wrong, and this is better than lying around in a depressed funk … but now I've got this dog-hunting bug."
"No problem?" Tomash said, uncertain.
"More seriously, thanks. I think I needed something like this. Maybe it doesn't pan out and I'll go looking for another quest. Or I'll just be sticking 'Have you seen this dog?' posters up."
"Glad I could help," Tomash said. "Mind if I head out? It feels like I've handled the problem I forked for so I'm not sure what else to do here."
"Can't have you stealing all the bacon," Sylvia joked.
"I would *never*!" Tomash protested. "... okay, maybe I would."
"Let's keep in touch?" Sylvia suggested.
"Yeah, you've got my address, I'll make sure it updates through the merge." Tomash said as he made his way to the door. "Good luck!"
"Bye!"
Tomash quit out and merged down.
---
Later that day, Sylvia stepped into the Bay of Colors. She wasn't here to help place a tile or to draw in what was left of the sand by this late in the afternoon. Instead, she walked straight for a familiar boardwalk.
(A familiar scent on the breeze. *She's back shesbackshesbackshesback!!!!!!*)
She didn't make it halfway down the nearby street before a furry missile ran up to her and jumped, trying to get to her face, barking all the while. Said dog then resorted to hopping in circles around her. His tail *was* about to fall off.
Sylvia beamed. "Hi Scout!" she called out.
This didn't have much of an impact on the doggo, who still hadn't turned his zoomies down to a petting-friendly velocity.
"Scout. Sit."
That worked. Scout sat. He was a very good dog when he wanted to be, which was most of the time.
"Good boy!" Sylvia praised him, leaning down to scratch him in that one spot she knew he liked. Then she remembered about sensorium messages and why she had a guide to the Scout pack on her. "*Missed you too, buddy.*"
"*Hi! You're back! Okay? Have food?*" Scout's tail thumping against the cobblestones was very audible.
"*Yeah, I'm back. I'm doing better, at least. Tomash gave me an idea for something to do with myself.*" She kept petting Scout so she wouldn't look too weird.
Scout didn't have anything to say there.
"*I'm trying to find all the Scouts! And give them bacon, obviously.*"
"*Sounds like a fun chase!"* Scout agreed.
"*I could use a hint, though,*" she said, showing Scout her list. "*A lot of these names are really vague.*"
"*I could use some bacon,*" Scout replied, sniffing at Sylvia to see where she was hiding the fried meat.
"*Hint first,*" Sylvia tried to insist.
"*Bacon,*" Scout countered.
"*Hint.*"
"***Bacon.***"
"Okay, fine," Sylvia said, "I can't say no to that adorable face of yours." She offered Scout the crispy fried meat she'd stashed in her purse for exactly this purpose. He ate it slowly, savoring the familiar taste and texture.
"*You'll be back every week?*" he asked.
Sylvia thought about that a moment. "*Yeah. For you, I'll do that.*"
Scout replied by trying to lick her face. "Hey!" Sylvia objected.
Scout calmed down and sat for a moment. "*I have a hint. Seek new arrivals.*"
Sylvia squawked. "*That's barely helpful!*"
"*No fun if it's too easy!*" Scout replied.
Sylvia took out the second piece of bacon she'd been planning to give to Scout and broke it into small pieces, which she flung around the street. "Have fun, Scout!" she said, after she'd disconnected the sensorium message.
Scout scurried off, nose near the ground, to find all the little bits of tasty treat. He absolutely had fun. The whole incident was a good ending to an exciting day.
Sylvia went home, where she started trying to find out where new uploads often ended up and if that'd changed since her newbie days. Maybe one of those would match up with a Scout name. It sure wasn't easy, but, in its own way, this was fun.
Sylvia and Scout both went to sleep satisfied.